


You Can't Make Old Friends

by Somekindofflower



Series: A Call Away [2]
Category: ER (TV 1994)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29967009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somekindofflower/pseuds/Somekindofflower
Summary: Carter gets a call from Abby and Luka after his kidney transplant.It's not necessary to read the first in the series to read this one.
Series: A Call Away [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204103
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	You Can't Make Old Friends

**Author's Note:**

> So calls between friends after they leave County is now going to be a thing! Title is from the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers duet.

Carter slowly makes his way back to his hospital bed after his afternoon lap around the floor and winces as he climbs in. Sharon, his current nurse (known in his mind as the bossy one) humphs at him. 

“Need to use the bathroom?”

“Nope, I’m good.” 

“Any pain?”

He holds back an eyeroll. “I’m fine.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, I’ll be back at six for your next round of meds, but if you have any pain before then, you’d better use the call button, Dr. Carter, since you won’t take the morphine drip.”

He’s pushing too hard in her mind, but while she knows he’s avoiding narcotics and why, she doesn’t get it. It’s one thing when he’d go out of his mind with pain otherwise, but he can take this. “Got it, thanks, Sharon.”

The look she gives him on her way out of the room rivals any he’s ever seen from Haleh. The thought makes his lips curve upward. His recovery room has been a rotating hangout for former and current County General employees the past five days, ever since Peter called Frank to rat him out. Worn out and okay, yeah, in pain, as he is, it’s so nice to feel wanted. If Kem doesn’t come...well, if she never comes and won’t let him come to her, at least he can still kind of, sort of, maybe belong somewhere. 

It hurts far worse than his incision site that she didn’t get on a plane when she heard about his transplant.

His room phone rings and he takes a deep breath before answering. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Abby. How are you feeling?”

“Hey!” It’s been forever since they’ve talked. “I’m okay. Tired and sore, but mostly good.”

“Good. That’s good. So why the hell didn’t you let us know what was going on?!”

Wow, she’s going straight from zero to ticked off. “I, uh…”

“I know we haven’t been in super close touch, but come on, Carter, we want to know this stuff. We could’ve been there.”

A lump rises in his throat that he tries to swallow past and can’t. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to interrupt you guys and I didn’t…”

“Did you even have anybody there? Neela said Kem isn’t there.” Typical Abby, anger but with all that worry right behind it.

“No, she’s in Paris with her mom. She—uh, she said she thinks she wants a divorce.”

That sits heavy in the long pause between them. When she answers, he can tell she’s on the verge of tears. “I’m so sorry, John. Does she know about this?”

“Yeah. I mean, I played it down. She knew I came back to Chicago, but not how bad it was. I called her after the surgery but...she’s in Paris.” His eyes sting but nothing like his heart. He hadn’t asked her to come, but he’d still held onto a sliver of hope that if she knew, she would.

Her continued absence seems like the last nail in the coffin of their sad, sick marriage.

“Did you tell your parents?” 

“They know now, but you know how it is. Even if they had come.” He shrugs. It goes unsaid that they wouldn’t have been much help or comfort.

“Yeah.” Her voice is thin, she’s crying.

Damn, he’s pathetic. He’s this close to sobbing over the line. Time to focus on something else. 

“I wasn’t alone. Dr. Benton works here and he saw me through the surgery. He’s been checking up on me. And he called County, so I’ve had a revolving door of visitors.”

“That’s good. But John—”

“I wanted to call you guys. I just know you’ve been having a hard time and you’re trying to start over. I didn’t want to burden you with all of my problems. And Luka doesn’t want to hear from me.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. I know you two had a fight while we were, um, separated, but if you think that means he’s still pissed or that he doesn’t want to know when you move across the world or have major surgery, you don’t know him at all.”

He sighs, still feeling guilty, but something in his chest loosens. 

“I know we didn’t stay in close enough touch before, we had, well, we had a lot going on and I was…”

“Abby, I didn’t expect you to call. I knew enough from Luka. How are you doing now?” From the bits and pieces he’s heard at County, he’s pretty sure he’s the only one who heard the full breadth of what happened, from Luka’s side anyway. With how poorly Luka took that, he knew she wouldn’t want to call him, of all people, even if he could’ve helped.

“I’m good. Really good, not just avoiding it good. You know.” 

“Yeah.” The confidence and honesty in her voice reassures him when he didn’t even know he needed it. And he can’t help but return it. “I knew people from County would come if I asked, my parents, you and Luka. But even if everybody else was here, it’s not...” Not _her._

Tears spill out as he loses that battle. It’s not fair, he knows, to expect her to come when he didn’t tell her. But if he had told her and she still didn’t come, he was afraid it would break him in his already fragile state.

“I know,” she says, and he can hear that she does. A tiny bit of that anger that he’d vented at Luka during that conversation a year or so earlier flares back up. 

“Yeah. How are you and Luka?”

“We’re happy. I mean, it’s been hard, but there were things we ignored and swept under the rug that we both needed to face. We’ve been going to therapy.”

Really? The two of them? “Therapy?” 

“Yeah, it’s this thing where you sit down and talk about your life and your feelings to a professional.”

The audible disgust makes him crack a smile. “Sounds terrible.”

“Oh, it is. Want to know the worst part?”

“What’s that?”

“It works.”

He can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I can see why you’d hate that.”

There’s a scuffle from her end of the phone and she pulls it away from her mouth. “Hey guys!” There’s a deep sweetness to the way she says it that lets him know she’s talking to Luka and Joe.

A moment later, she comes back to command “Here John, talk to Luka,” and immediately hand the phone over.

There’s an awkward pause where he can sense Luka on the line. 

“Carter?”

“Hey.”

“How are you doing?”

“Good. Well, as good as can be expected.” 

There’s another fraught silence, and Carter is about to jump in to apologize and say it’s fine if Luka doesn’t want to talk, but Luka finally speaks.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us what was going on?”

They’re in sync on that point, at least. His grip on the phone relaxes. “I know, Abby already fussed at me. I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t want anybody to worry, I guess. And I didn’t know if you wanted to hear from me.”

Luka sighs heavily. “I’m sorry. I should have called you after, I was just...I was a mess. You were right, I was being an idiot. I was mad because I knew it.”

“I shouldn’t have kicked you when you were down.” 

That is a bad habit of his with Luka. It was just so frustrating that Luka had— _has_ —what he’s longed for all along, what _both_ of them longed for all along: love, a family. It was right there and he was so close to willingly letting it slip away. It still wasn’t fair to take the pain of his own loss and toss it at Luka like a weapon. Especially not when he was already so hurt.

“You were pretty down yourself.” 

“Yeah.” At the time, he was hoping if he ignored the illness that grew worse with each day and the distance between him and his wife, they’d magically go away. That worked as well as ever.

“Are you going to stay in Chicago?”

“For a while.”

“We can still come visit you. It might take us some time to arrange with our new jobs, but we can get there.”

“No, I’m alright.” 

He really is. He’s got staff here to take care of him. He’s got old friends that are on their way to becoming current friends again. Plus, he doesn’t want to ask them to come back to Chicago, the same way he hesitates to ask it of Kem. They’ve said they’re good and he can hear that they truly are. They’re ridiculously in love, he’s known that for years, but he can hear the steadiness now. He doesn’t want to be the reason they leave their safe haven. Not yet.

“I’m going to stay in Chicago to recuperate, but I can come see you guys when I’m able to travel. If you want.”

“Of course you can come see us! Whenever you want.” 

Abby yells “You’d better!” in the background before grabbing the phone. 

“You better come see us. Ow!” 

“Easy, Joe. Gentle!” He hears Luka admonish his son with laughter in his voice.

“Once you’re well enough to survive an almost three-year-old’s not-so-gentle attention.” 

“He’s almost three?” Doing the math makes that obvious, but damn. That’s wild.

“Yeah, time flies when you’re globe-trotting. But, John, however much time passes, we’re still here, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, voice slightly cracking.

Luka comes back on the line then. “That goes for me too. You and I wouldn’t be ourselves if we didn’t piss each other off every now and then, but it doesn’t mean we’re not still friends.” 

Carter feels something untwist in his chest. They’re really more like family, but family as it should be. Not the kind of family he’s ever had, but the kind that’s dependable, even when it hurts.

“We’ve got a yard now, so if we need to work through some anger, I can get some foils and we can fence it out.”

Carter cracks up then, surprising himself and cringing as it pulls his back. 

“Oh, _hell_ no!” He hears Abby yell. 

“Heh no!”

“Not again,” Luka mutters under his breath as Abby says something unintelligible. 

It becomes clearer what she must have said when Joe yells “Shit!”

To hell with the pain, Carter can’t hold back his laughter as his friends try to reason with their pint-sized pottymouth. 

“At least the ones he’s learned from me aren’t in English,” he mumbles into the phone. “Mostly.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

“Yeah, we’d better go feed him before we have a mutiny. But listen. Call us, email, whatever. If we don’t hear from you in a week, I’m going to sic Abby on you again and she’ll be extra pissed.”

“Yeah, I’ll talk to you soon. Bye, Luka.

“Bye.” 

A weight’s been lifted off his shoulders that he didn’t realize was so heavy. That brief window into who they are now: a happily married couple, a family, makes him wish he hadn’t missed so much.

God, he wants that so badly. If he weren’t so glad for them and if it didn’t give him a glimmer of hope, he’d be more jealous. But he knows how hard-won what they have is. If Abby and Luka can work things out with all their grief and hurt and baggage, maybe he and Kem can too. Certainly, he loves Kem enough to try again. He knows she loves him too, just...maybe not enough. 

At least he’ll know. And at least he’s starting to rebuild a life that he could hang onto even if she doesn’t. One where he has friends around who know and love him and will kick his ass if he disappears again.

Speaking of kicking his ass, Sharon comes back in with his meds. “What are you smiling at?”

“Oh, nothing. I told you I was good.”

She snorts derisively, but he is. Or at least he might be getting there.


End file.
